So I REALLY just let time get away from me with blogging, so I apologize. Life got super busy and we weren’t doing as many blog-worthy things so I wanted to stagger my posts a little more and then it just got to the point where I was just putting it off. And I really don’t want to do that anymore because I have a lot of really cool places yet to write about and life is getting a little more balanced every day.

So this blog’s name is called “It’s More Than Beaches” and one of the main things people associate with Florida besides the beaches is Disney World! Somehow, in all the trips I had taken to Florida, a Disney trip just never happened. James and myself did go to Disney Springs on our very first vacation together and I got a tattoo in Kissimmee, but that was the extent of Disney for me up until October this year when my mother and niece visited.

My mother had went to Disney as a teenager and of course my Florida raised fiancé had been multiple times, but for me and my 5 year old niece it was a first! I even got us matching tee shirts. I am really just beyond grateful that my first Disney trip got to be with the three people I love more than anyone. For my niece to have these memories of going with us means a lot to me as well. We chose Magic Kingdom as the park to go to because we just felt it had more iconic things, and was friendly for a 5 year old

We went in the beginning of October and even though the park was fairly full, I’m told it wasn’t as busy as normal or during the summer. Even though it was October, it was still around 100 degrees. Thankfully Disney has several rest stations where you can sit without your mask and cool down and we made good use of them.

I will say that whatever your opinions on wearing a mask are (and I usually don’t have an issue wearing one), I found wearing one all day in the heat, walking as much as we were, to be extremely hard. I actually ended up getting “mask-ne” (mask acne) from this a few days later that took weeks to heal because of all the sweating. I really don’t know how my little niece did it. And the Disney employees were SPOT ON about making sure you had it on properly at all times. I wish we could have gotten some photos of us all without masks but it wasn’t worth getting kicked out of the park for. We just tried to remember that people were only doing their jobs.

The lines for the rides weren’t long except for Splash Mountain and we got to ride a bunch of them! We started off seeing one of the shows close to the entrance that blew out bubbles and other fun interactive stuff, then left to ride the Teacups. I have wanted to ride the Teacups my whole life! And it was the only ride my mother rode. She isn’t much of a ride person and most of the time I am not either, but little kid rides are fine for me.

After the Teacups we split up for a little bit because my mom wanted to get something to eat and rest for a bit because as hot as it felt to us, it was even more so for my Midwestern family who hadn’t been acclimating to it all summer. She ended up just hanging out in one of the rest stations for a while. We weren’t aware of this until in the park, but food had to be ordered through an app and even so the wait was still very long. We really didn’t even eat while we were there other than James and I split a donut because it was just a little too hot for me to want to eat. I will say that I don’t like the whole ‘have to order food through an app’ thing because I was trying to save my battery and I imagine tons of people have their phones go dead because of photo taking so it was a little bit of an annoying downer, but not enough to ruin our time.

I do have a lot more to say about Disney and our experience and some more photos but since this blog is already a little long I will leave it off for another part. In the mean time I will be gathering more content for the future!

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